Obama's Road Map to Get Congressional Backing on Syria

In deciding he will ask Congress to authorize a military strike in Syria, President Barack Obama is gambling his presidency on the proposition that he can achieve the very goal that has proved most elusive to him for more than four years: a bipartisan consensus in a bitterly divided Congress.

Statements from everyone from White House spokespeople to John Kerry all seemed to be building towards an aggressive response to Syria without approval from Congress or the UN. But on Saturday plans took a dramatic shift.

The formula for legislative victory starts not with the opposition Republicans but with his own Democrats, runs through the still-powerful pro-Israel caucus and ends with a band of Republican hawks who have been far more eager for action in Syria than has the president now seeking their help.

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The USS Nimitz, above, and other ships headed to the Red Sea to support a potential strike on Syria, defense officials said over the weekend.

Ultimately, the president’s ability to achieve this feat may well depend on whether there is any life remaining in a time-honored idea, not recently tested: that politics ends at water’s edge. The cost of failure would be high, nothing less than a blow to the proposition that a war-weary and economically strained U.S. is still capable of, or even interested in, leading the world.

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But having given up on the idea of winning support for action at the United Nations Security Council, and having failed to win the support of America’s most trusted military partner, Britain, and having sidestepped the idea he can move decisively on his own, the president now has left himself dependent on a Congress where even his most anodyne proposals have been facing trouble.

Mr. Obama’s problems on Capitol Hill start with the fact that he has, for two years, been the most prominent skeptic of the idea he is now advocating, that intervention in Syria is in America’s interests. Though the president will argue that the calculation has changed fundamentally because of Syria’s use of chemical weapons, he can be sure that he now will hear back the very arguments he has made.

The strategy for overcoming such obstacles has to start with the congressional leadership, of course. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has had some tactical differences with the White House, but he has largely been a loyal soldier, as has House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.

Republican leaders are harder to read, and House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have been circumspect. But it’s a reasonable guess that both are old-school enough that they wouldn’t be comfortable opposing a commander-in-chief on an issue of national security.

Beyond that, here are the three building blocks for victory for President Obama:

His own party. Opposition to action in Syria lies mainly in an odd-bedfellow coalition of liberal Democrats and libertarian Republicans who, for different ideological reasons, tend to oppose military intervention abroad. Mr. Obama will have to crack this coalition, and he needs to do it first by pulling in members of his Democratic Party.

Republicans have noted acerbically that the president’s own party has been notably less enthused about action in Syria than have Republicans. GOP fence-sitters will be far less likely to cast votes to rescue the president if he hasn’t first shown he has the backing of his own party.

What ought to concern the White House is the fact that dozens of Democrats signed letters, written before Mr. Obama said he would seek congressional approval, that demanded congressional debate before any strike. Signing such a letter doesn’t mean a lawmaker is opposed to a military move, but it’s a pretty good leading indicator of unease.

Of particular note: A letter circulated by liberal Rep. Barbara Lee of California, which was signed by 64 Democrats, including many members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

The pro-Israel caucus. Friends of Israel may well represent the most potent and truly bipartisan coalition the administration can mobilize. Israel itself feels directly threatened by Syria’s chemical arsenal, and its friends in Congress will feel a powerful need to stand up to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Moreover, they see taking a stand in Syria as an important precursor for stopping the nuclear-weapons ambitions of Syria’s close ally, Iran. An editorial posted recently on the website of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee declared: “The use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime highlights the danger of allowing the world’s most dangerous regimes to possess weapons of mass destruction.”

Support for Israel transcends even the brightest partisan lines. It’s one of the few areas where Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic national chairman, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor come together, for instance. A group called the Congressional Israel Allies Caucus counts among its members liberal Rep. Nita Lowey of New York and conservative Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who would represent an odd pairing on virtually any other issue.

Republican hawks. Nobody in Congress has been more vocal or consistent in pushing for action in Syria than Sen. John McCain, the man who ran against Mr. Obama in 2008. Not far behind has been his sidekick, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Those two form the backbone of a group of Republicans who would be only too happy to see the U.S. opposing Syria’s regime.

The problem on this front is a disagreement about ultimate goals. Sens. McCain and Graham promptly issued a statement saying they couldn’t support a narrow resolution that merely called for a limited military strike in retaliation for use of chemical weapons; they demand broader action designed to change Syria’s regime.

That difference must be bridged, and, in a good sign for the president, Sens. McCain and Graham sounded upbeat coming out of a White House meeting Monday. In the end, it’s hard to imagine such lawmakers voting against doing something.
Write to Gerald F. Seib at jerry.seib@wsj.com

Corrections & AmplificationsEric Cantor is the House majority leader. An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to him as the Republican whip in the House.
A version of this article appeared September 2, 2013, on page A7 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: What Obama Must Do to Bring Congress on Board.

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